Nathaniel Hawthorne :: essays research papers

Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 May 19, 1864) was a 19th century American novelist and short story writer. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts and died in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Hawthornes father was a sea captain and descendant of John Hathorne, one of the judges who oversaw the Salem hex Trials. Hawthornes father died at sea in 1808, when Hawthorne was only four years old, and Nathaniel was raised secluded from the world by his mother.Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College in Maine from 18211824 where he became friends with Longfellow and coming(prenominal) president Franklin Pierce.In 1842, he married illustrator and transcendentalist Sophia Peabody, and the two moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, where they lived for three years. Later they moved to The Wayside, previously a firm of the Alcotts. Their neighbors in Concord included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Like Hawthorne, Sophia was a reclusive person. She was, in fact, bedridden with headach es until her sister introduced her to Hawthorne, after which her headaches seem to have abated. The Hawthornes enjoyed a longsighted marriage, and Sophia was greatly enamored with her husbands work. In one of her journals, she writes "I am always so dazzled and bewildered with the richness, the depth, the... jewels of beauty in his productions that I am always looking forward to a second reading where I can ponder and muse and fully take in the miraculous wealth of thoughts" (Jan fourteenth 1951, Journal of Sophia Hawthorne. Berg Collection NY Public Library).The two had three children Una, Julian, and Rose. Una suffered from mental illness and died young. Julian moved out west and wrote a book close to his father. Rose converted to Roman Catholicism and took her vows as a Dominican nun. She founded a religious order to care for victims of cancer.Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864 in Plymouth, N.H. on a trip to the mountains with his friend Franklin Pierce.Hawthorne is best-k nown today for his many short stories (he called them "tales") and his four major romances of 185060 The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale mash (1852), and The Marble Faun (1860). (Another book-length romance, Fanshawe, was published anonymously in 1828.)Before publishing his first collection of tales in 1837, Hawthorne wrote scores of short stories and sketches, publishing them anonymously or pseudonymously in periodicals such as The New-England Magazine and The United States Democratic Review.